Putting Food First
Our mission from the first day we opened the doors at Real Food Blends was to promote the concept of blenderized diets for people with feeding tubes. (Our loftiest goal? To make real food be the default for people with feeding tubes, not the exception! Dare we dream?!!)
To help accomplish this goal, we are actively working on handouts, research and educational materials promoting the benefits of blenderized diets for tube-fed people. We’re also starting to travel the country to help educate RDs on blended diets and our meals.
How you can help
Can you share your blended diet story? Why you started? How it’s impacted your life / your family? Anything you’d like medical professionals to know? We will compile these stories to distribute online and to dietitians who need a little more ‘data’ on why they should put food first.
From all of us, and all the future tubies who will benefit from your story, THANK YOU!
Ten Things To Know About Real Food Blends Meals
1- Each meal is 100% real food, pureed to fit through a feeding tube. There’s nothing synthetic or artificial added.
2- These meals are NOT formula. They are meals, meant to be enjoyed in conjunction with each other, a homemade blended diet or even formula. Meal plans are available here.
3- No prescription needed!! Our meals are not drugs so you don’t need a written prescription to buy. You can order here or contact your Durable Medical Equipment company to have billed to your insurance.
Start with a sample pack. Order now!
4- Nutritional variety is key to health! We wouldn’t recommend anyone live off the same thing, every day, for every meal, which is why we have 6 different meals to be used in conjunction with each other. Check out this transition guide for help getting started with RFB. (
5- No refrigeration required!
6- These meals are produced in an FDA & USDA regulated facility, and made shelf-stable by a high-heat process, the same process that canned baby food goes through to be made shelf-stable.
7- Each Real Food Blends meal was tested on a 14fr G-tube. They’re not recommended for NG/ NJ tubes as the tube size is so small. Although we have not tested, some of our RFB customers do use our meals through J-tubes or 12fr G-Tube (additional liquid is needed to pump feed through these smaller tubes. Details here. Always discuss with your medical team.)
8- Who can have these meals? Typically, anyone with a G-tube that doesn’t have (or didn’t have prior to the tube being placed) major digestives issues. If the digestive system is intact and working, they should be able to benefit from a real food diet. (Remember, reflux / GERD, constipation and other ‘digestive’ systems have been known to improve on real food versus formula! Also remember that formula intolerance can ‘mask’ the fact that the digestive system was working prior to being fed a formula-only diet.)
9- Insurance covers these meals for many people. Plans and policies can vary so check with your DME or insurance company (HCPCS code B4149) for coverage criteria but it’s often as simple as getting the orders from your doctor and submitting to your DME.
10- The meals are intended to be bolus fed with a syringe but can fit through most feeding pumps. (Most people that switch to a real food by tube diet find that the body is able to handle more food in less time – think about how the oral eaters of the world eat a ‘bolus’ meal in a relatively short period of time. Just because a tube-fed person can’t tolerate a bolus of formula doesn’t mean they won’t tolerate a bolus of real food. Start slowly and work with your medical team.) This video shows the various ways to feed and tips & tricks on bolus and pump feeding.
If you want to get started, you can pick up a sample pack of our 3 meals to test out at home. Always consult with your medical team before making any changes to a tube-fed person’s diet.
Blend On!
As the founder & CEO of Real Food Blends, many people are surprised to learn that I still make blends for my son AJ. I’ve been blending for him for three years now, it’s almost second nature! I find making his food to be healing in many ways – he gets a lot of what the rest of the family eats as he should since he’s part of the family!
All of us at Real Food Blends believe that fresh food is best and encourage anyone with a feeding tube or caring for someone with a feeding tube to discuss a homemade blenderized diet with their medical team. But we also know that the time, effort and work involved in making a blended diet is .. a lot. Even now, after 3 years and being in a good routine with AJ’s blends, it’s still work. I’m thankful to have Real Food Blends to rely on when I don’t feel like cooking that day, and that I no longer have to stress when the freezer stash is getting low, knowing that I need to do another marathon shopping, prepping, cooking & blending session. Like this:
That was a few days worth of meals and relatively easy blends. Plus, it helps to have two sinks and two Vitamix containers!
As summer starts and our meals are once again readily available, we hope that our blending families can relax a bit, maybe enjoy vacation a little more without coolers of dry ice & carrying their blender around! With our meals in your pantry you or your loved one can still have a 100% real food meal, and a little time out of the kitchen.
Blend on!
This Just In
First, thank you all for your patience as we made more meals. The initial response was so overwhelming, and shows what a need there is in our tube-fed community for easy access to real food.
The meals are being produced on May 20th and will start to ship later that week. All backorders will be fulfilled first! If you want to receive your meals this month, please order now as any order placed after May 15th will not ship until early June. (This is because the long-distance carriers that are moving our meals from the manufacturer to the fulfillment center needs time to travel!)
Save on shipping
Because you have all been so patient with us, we’re extending the $9.95 flat rate shipping on all backorders. If you order before May 15th, your entire order will ship for only $9.95. Our meals are shelf-stable for 3 years, so stock up!(There is no limit on how much you can order this time!)
Changes
Although the response to our meals was overwhelmingly positive, we did alter the quinoa version s
lightly to make the blend a little thinner. The chicken blend has a slight change to the nutrition profile from the first batch as well due to sourcing a different cut of chicken (to help avoid any particulant matter that could clog a tube.) Salmon meals have remained unchanged.
You will notice that the meals will not have the outer box / carton. We wanted to cut down on our carbon footprint and shipping weights, so all the information is printed directly on the pouches.
Insurance Update
I know many of you are eager to have insurance billed for these meals. Please know we are working on it and dedicating every free moment to establishing the necessary relationships with DMEs and distributors that supply hospitals, institutions and DMEs with enteral nutrition. These talks are going very well, but take time. For more information about getting insurance coverage and reimbursement, click here. Make sure you are signed up for our emails in order to be notified as we start to partner with DMEs to bill your insurer directly.
So much of our early success is due to our customers sharing our meals with other caregivers, tube-fed people and their medical teams. Although real food as an option for tube-feeding is growing in popularity, we still need your help getting the word out that real food is a viable option for many on tubes, and that our meals can make it easier than every before.
(Not So) Accidental Advocates
Gabe & Anthony preparing Real Food Blends meals for shipping.
If you supported our crowdfunding campaign or received one of our sample meals, chances are that your order helped give a disabled person a job.
When I set out to create Real Food Blends, I recognized that there was an opportunity to not just provide easier access to real food, but also to be a better corporate citizen. That’s why the development of these meals took longer than expected. It would have been faster and cheaper to add some preservatives or come out with only one variety, but that’s not what I wanted for my son. That’s also why we sourced the (beloved) squirrel syringes and decided to sell them for just about our cost.
Doing better is also why we have made a commitment to providing meaningful employment to disabled people. Instead of renting our own warehouse and staff, or paying a private fulfillment house, we have consciously chose to help employ disabled workers.
As we move forward, we have reaffirmed our commitment to disability inclusion and partnered with a large disabled workforce fulfillment house to label and ship the cases of Real Food Blends to our customers. When the cases arrive at your doorstep, know that not only are you getting 100% real food, but you have helped provide a disabled person with meaningful work.
Not only does this make good business sense for Real Food Blends, supporting these programs and facilities now can help make sure that people like my son AJ have meaningful employment, and a sense of satisfaction that only a job well done can provide.
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Randy Lewis, the former SVP of logistics at Walgreens and an advisor to Real Food Blends, has guided us through this process to make sure we could deliver for our customers, and to our mission of disability inclusion. His book, No Greatness Without Goodness: How a Father’s Love Changed a Company and Sparked a Movement, is now available and his proceeds are going to charity. (You can read more about his story – and how he became an “Accidental Advocate” – here.)
We are giving away 5 free copies of the book to the first 5 people that post they want one on our Facebook wall or Tweet us.
Note: Our meals are produced and packaged in a fully USDA / FDA regulated facility and only sent to the fulfillment house for shipping and handling once they are packaged and sealed into cases.
